Lorina Stephens's Blog, page 84

Seasons Greetings

So, I'm sitting here in the loft, scheming new ideas and plot lines for this next novel of mine, The Rose Guardian. Christmas music is playing on iTunes. Over my head the roofers are thumping and bashing and doing a Morris dance, installing a new steel roof on this grand old stone house. On the floor below Izzy, my adopted budgie, squawks and trills, happy he's been given a new stalk of millet. Doesn't take much to make him happy.

I suppose Izzy and I share that, finding joy in simple...

Another great review for Shadow Song

Reprinted from Goodreads.
Lorina Stephens' Shadow Song is a part-fantasy historical drama/love story, charting the, for lack of a better word, coming-of-age of Danielle Michelle Fleming. The daughter of a beautiful French aristocrat and an English gentleman, and the owner of a gift that European culture/traditions forbids, Danielle is, at the beginning of the novel, feeling her privileged lifestyle slip away, replaced with bitter poverty. The majority of the novel is set in Upper Canada...

Simon Rose Joins Five Rivers' Authors

Yesterday Five Rivers reached an agreement to publish the next young adult novel from author Simon Rose, Flashback.

The novel is a reincarnation, time-travel story about young Vancouver-based Max, who finds himself a reluctant investigator into a murder that happened decades ago to David Dexter. Max's dreams and findings lead him to people it would appear he knew in a previous life and in the end transport back in time and body into the dangerous psychic experiments during the US/Soviet Union ...

The Value, or Not, of Reviews

There was a time, when legacy publishing houses decided what the public read, that legacy review periodicals ruled the publishing marketplace. Then print on demand technologies happened and vanity press took a back seat when indie authors sought economic and environmental options for their publications. Lulu, CreateSpace, BookSurge and others burgeoned. Last year in the US over 500,000 new titles were released, of which over half of those were from indie-authors. Quite staggering statistics.

First Appearance of Smashwords Distribution

In my daily check of various marketing strategies Five Rivers employs, I was very pleased to find today the distribution we chose to undertake through Smashwords has taken effect. All our books are now available, in all digital formats, through Barnes and Noble.

This is the first of many channels into which Five Rivers eBooks will stream. In the coming weeks you should be able to find our digital books at Amazon and Sony, and if all goes well with the morphing Shortcovers to Kobo, Five...

Corporate Dithering at Indigo

If you haven't already heard, you shortly will that Indigo has flipped its digital book identity as of midnight December 14, now branding itself Kobo (an anagram of book) instead of Shortcovers.

In the very short year Indigo's digital book service has been in operation, it's been plagued with mismanagement, lack of vision and poor communication with its publishing partners, particularly indie publishers. Five Rivers signed up for Shortcovers within weeks of Shortcovers launch, and is still w...

Dr. Peter Watts, Canadian Science Fiction Writer, Arrested at US Border

Reprinted from Cory Doctorow's blog, Boing Boing at: http://www.boingboing.net/2009/12/11/dr-peter-watts-canad.html#more

My friend, the wonderful sf writer Peter Watts was beaten without provocation and arrested by US border guards on Tuesday. I heard about it early Wednesday morning in London and called Cindy Cohn, the legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. She worked her contacts to get in touch with civil rights lawyers in Michigan, and we mobilized with Caitlin Sweet...

Baby It's Cold Outside

At least in Canada it is. It's a blustery, third day of snow squall warnings, -11 Celsius (wind chill of -19). Wind is from the north, north-west at 20km/hr. There's 46 cm of snow on the ground where it hasn't drifted into a frozen version of a sand desert. Dawn banishes the night, a transition from black to grey. The world is a study of muted monochrome, like a Victorian pen and ink sketch. Still the snow falls. Periodically I hear it patter against the gable windows.

I check my cup for...

Another Successful Stop on the Fall Tour

It was another successful book signing yesterday at Chapters, Stone Road Mall, Guelph, Ontario yesterday. We sold one third of the stock of From Mountains of Ice, made some new contacts, and developed two eager fans (hi, Aerius and Erin!)

Huge thanks go to Sherrill and Sean at Chapters, as well as all the terrific staff, for their support and professionalism in what was a busy shopping day.

Friday I'll be at Smith Books, Heritage Mall, Owen Sound from 7:00 to 10:00 p.m., my last stop on the...

The Little Book that Could

When Paul Lima came to me with his book, How to Write a Non-fiction Book in 60 Days, I thought sure, why not, although I must admit to some skepticism that the book would do well. With literally tens of thousands of books out there on the craft of writing, written by people with far more public profile than Paul (sorry, Paul, but it's hard to compete with the likes of Stephen King et al), I quite understandably thought we'd sell a few copies, but it would, if nothing else, allow Five Rivers a...